Composers: John
Lennon & Paul McCartney Original
performers: The
Beatles (1963)
First release: UK
single, November 1963 First
US release: US B-side, March 1964
Recording date: October
1963 Recording
location: De Lane Lea Studios, Holborn (London)
Producer: Eric
Easton Performed onstage:
1963-65,
1995 (possibly)
Line-up:
Drums: Charlie
Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Electric guitar: Keith
Richards
Slide electric guitar (& solo): Brian
Jones
Lead vocal: Mick
Jagger
Backing vocal:
Brian Jones
(Yes) I want to be your lover, baby
I want to be your man
(Yeah) Tell me that you love me, baby
Tell me you understand
I want to be your man
Yeah
TrackTalk
(John and Paul) were very much into hustling songs. Everybody was doing Beatles' songs and they were going straight into the charts. But we liked that song and the fact that John and Paul came down to a rehearsal of ours and laid it on us. We hadn't heard their version, we just heard John and Paul on piano, banging it out, you know. And we picked it up and it was just one of those jams... THEY got enthusiastic, WE got enthusiastic and we said, Right, we'll cut it tomorrow.
We came up with I Wanna Be Your Man
- a Bo Diddley kind of thing. I said to Mick, Well, Ringo's got this
track on our album, but it won't be a single and it might suit you guys.
I knew Mick was into maracas, from when we'd seen them down at the Crawdaddy.
John and Paul ran through I Wanna Be Your
Man for us. Paul, being left-handed, amazed me by playing my bass backward.
Brian tried slide on it, which sounded great.
Well, we knew (the Beatles) by then and we
were rehearsing and Andrew brought
Paul and John down to the rehearsal. They said they had this tune, they
were really hustlers then. I mean the way they used to hustle tunes was
great: Hey Mick, we've got this great song. So they played it and
we thought it sounded pretty commercial, which is what we were looking
for, so we did it like Elmore James or something. I haven't heard it for
ages but it must be pretty freaky 'cause nobody really produced it... It
was completely crackers, but it was a hit and sounded great onstage.
We kind of learned it pretty quickly 'cause
there wasn't that much to learn. Then Brian got his slide out, his steel
(guitar) out and dadaw... dadaw... and we said, Yeah, that's
better, dirty it up a bit and bash it out, and we kind of completely
turned the song around and made it much more tough, Stones- and Elmore
James-like.